Powertop and tuned

Powertop is a FLOSS program from Intel that tunes your power settings to maximize your battery on mobile Linux devices using Intel CPUs.

Tuned is a Red Hat tool for system tuning. Anyone who has spoken with me regarding system setups, knows fully that I adore this tool, as it sets up a good number of useful parameters for the desired profile. There are profiles for virtual machines, workstations, virtual machine host, etc.

Combining these two tools can yield a fantastic result that can be toggled off with the usage of tuned. The steps below will get this setup on your mobile device.

Configure a new profile. This can be named anything unique. My habits are to name it my manufacturer and model.

sudo powertop2tuned -e NEW_PROFILE_NAME

Enable new profile

sudo tuned-adm profile NEW_PROFILE_NAME

If yopu are new to powertop, there are two things you will want to do next. First a calibration is needed.

sudo powertop --calibrate

Then use the system as much as you can (may need a few battery top offs, although it shouldn't). After a while, you can auto-tune your system for the first time. This will create a very good starting spot to work off of. The period in between the initial run and then tune, will be a data gathering period. Once your usage is determined from this data, then the tunings can truly begin. But right off the bat, you should see a notable improvement.